Senior Vatican cardinal hints at prospect of married priests

Last updated at 12:24 04 December 2006

Brazilian Cardinal Claudio Hummes, recently named to head the Vatican's office in charge of priests around the world, has said the church can reconsider the issue of celibacy because it is not a dogma.

"Celibacy is a discipline, not a dogma of the church," Hummes is quoted as telling Brazilian newspaper Folha de S. Paulo.

"Certainly, the majority of the apostles were married. In this modern age, the church must observe these things, it has to advance with history."

Hummes' comments come some two weeks after the Vatican reaffirmed the requirement of celibacy for priests, responding to former bishop Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo, a renegade married archbishop who is leading a high-profile crusade for the Roman Catholic Church to allow priests to marry.

The 72-year-old Hummes, who heads the Roman Catholic diocese in Sao Paulo, Brazil's largest, is to succeed Colombian Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos as Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy - the office in charge of priests.

The Vatican has strongly resisted loosening the celibacy requirement despite some rising voices against it.

Last year, one of France's most respected Catholic figures, Abbe Pierre, wrote that he favored allowing priests to marry.

In 2003, more than 160 priests in the Milwaukee Archdiocese in the US state of Wisconsin signed a letter supporting married clergy.

In early Christianity, there was no formal ban on marriage for clergy. The Bible mentions St. Peter's mother-in-law and many scholars suggest other apostles had wives - as well as some popes, such as the 9th century Hadrian II.

In the early Middle Ages, however, movements for celibacy gained momentum and it became a requirement by the 12th century.

There are an estimated 100,000 to 150,000 men worldwide who left the active priesthood to marry. The church considers them outcasts.